So This Is Christmas
by ggo85
Summary: Wilson has some medical issues -- in a Santa suit.
1. Chapter 1

Rating: Mild PG

Spoilers: None. Takes place any time after the beginning of season 4.

Notes: House and company belong to Fox and company and not to me. Thanks to Autumn and Geekygecko for betas.

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"You could pay someone to do this," House said, twiddling his cane in his fingers. "By the hour."

I was having a hard enough time stuffing myself into the Santa suit without simultaneously trying to match wits with House. So, I ignored him. I had in fact rented the bright red velveteen suit, with white fur trim and stiff black boots to make the rounds of the children's ward on Christmas Eve. Padding to make me look jolly was included gratis.

"What are you doing here anyway?" I asked. "Since when do you work on Christmas Eve?"

"Dying patient."

"So why are you _here_?" I asked, indicating my office with my free hand.

"Patient died."

"Oh, sorry."

House shrugged. "Triple A."

Abdominal aortic aneurysm. Not good and nothing House could do about it.

The instructions said the Santa suit would "fit easily over street clothes." Not exactly. I grunted as I cinched the belt over my artificially bulging waistline.

"Last time I checked," House continued, not bothering to lend me a hand, "Jews didn't believe in Santa Claus."

I hefted a black patent suspender over my shoulder. "Nor do most adults. The point is that most of my patients _do_."

"Or at least believe in getting free gifts."

I wasn't having any part of this. "Yeah," I said, unable to hide the sarcasm in my voice, "gives new meaning to the phrase 'dying to get a new video game.'" I pulled the adhesive strip from the back of the beard and gently pasted it to my chin. "Straight?"

"Always have been."

"The beard, you idiot." I shook my head with a snort and did my best to arrange the white-trimmed hat on my head.

"Wilson, it's fine. You're just going to the dying kiddie ward, not the Tony a-wards."

No use asking House for an opinion. I'd just have to stop by the men's room along the way to make sure I was properly put together. What I needed in this suit was air conditioning. The advertisement had also promised it was "breathable," but between the heavy velvet and the thick padding, beads of sweat were starting to pool on my forehead. I reached for the large burlap sack, grimacing as I heaved it over my shoulder.

House made no move to help me. "Have you thought about transporting all that junk in a wheelchair?"

I awkwardly adjusted the bag. "Kind of ruins the concept of Santa delivering the presents."

"And there's no chimney for you to climb down."

"I'll manage. The kids will manage."

"Where'd you get the loot?" House asked, pointing to the bulging bag.

I hobbled toward my office door, seeking balance with the bag. "Donations," I puffed. "Kids dying of cancer aren't exactly a hard sell." House trailed me toward the elevator. "Coming with me?" I asked, already certain of the answer.

"Better things to do."

"Pizza and porn?"

"No better way to spend Christmas Eve," he replied with a smile.

I really needed to start working out. The sack wasn't that heavy and the trip to the ward wasn't that long, but I was winded by the time I arrived and paused in the hallway to catch my breath. Feeling refreshed after a couple of minutes, I started my Santa rounds with the younger kids, gathered with their parents in the dayroom.

The excitement in the room was no different than you'd find in any group of children waiting for Santa Claus to appear. It was the emaciated bodies, bare scalps, and IV lines that made these kids different. A couple of the oncology nurses decked out as elves preceded me into the room. I couldn't help but smile at the oohs and ahs that greeted my arrival.

"Ho, Ho, Ho. Merry Christmas. Ho, ho, ho."

Usually, all I could offer these kids was pain and nausea and needles. It felt good to be able to be the source of joy, for a moment at least. For some odd reason, I tried to imagine House as Santa but the only image that came to mind was the Grinch. No, I corrected myself. That wasn't fair.

I forced myself to focus on the kids and not the tear-filled eyes of parents who wondered if this would be their son or daughter's last Christmas on earth. The kids still here on Christmas Eve were really sick; I always discharged every patient I thought could manage at home. The hospital was no place for a kid to spend Christmas – or any other day for that matter.

Gifts were quickly handed out – the younger kids were generally happy with anything they could unwrap. Some wanted to sit on my knee; most were too tired and too sick to do more than stay in their wheelchairs or parent's laps while I came to them. A few of my own patients recognized me, but most of the children were more than happy to accept me as Santa.

I knelt next to a girl who told me her name was Maxine. Not one of my patients but, judging by the fact that her right leg from the knee down was missing, I suspected she was battling osteosarcoma. The good news for her was that this form of cancer was generally curable. Still, going through life without a limb wasn't exactly good news.

She grinned when she opened the Afro-American Barbie, her smile broadening as she pulled it out of the box and lovingly stroked its long hair. "Thank you," her mother whispered to me. "It's exactly what she wanted."

I smiled, said something appropriate, then rubbed my chest and stretched a little. There was a slight pain under my breastbone that had been nagging me for several minutes now.

"Santa?"

I started with the realization that Maxine had asked me a question.

"Is there a wedding dress too?"

"Maxine!" her father admonished. "You should be thankful to Santa for what you got."

"But she'd look so beautiful . . . "

The debate over the Barbie and the dress continued between Maxine and her parents as I slowly stood up, grimacing as the pain burned in my chest. I took a cleansing breath, said Merry Christmas to the family and made my way out of the dayroom. I still had a number of older kids to visit.

Next stop was Adam, a fourteen-year-old with Hodgkin's. His prognosis was good but the chemo that would likely cure him had been rougher than expected and he needed the ongoing monitoring that only a hospital could provide. And, the whole process had taken its toll on his morale.

"You're not Santa," Adam exclaimed as I strode into his room. "You're Dr. Wilson. And I'm Jewish, so I don't give a crap about Santa."

"Adam!" his parents protested, simultaneously giving me a sheepish "what can we do?" look.

"It's okay," I said to all three of them. "You're right, Adam. I _am_ Dr. Wilson. I'm Jewish too. And, personally, I like the idea of Santa."

"Hanukah's better than Christmas, anyway. You get more gifts."

"Well, consider this a Hanukah gift, then" I said, pulling a wrapped present out of my bag. "Or, I can just give it to the next person on my list."

Adam held out his hands. As he peeled away the wrapping, his father pulled me aside. "How much longer is he going to have to stay here?"

This was the one downside to playing Santa – doing impromptu rounds with the patients and parents. Luckily, I was familiar enough with their son's case to answer. "Let's see how the next round of chemo goes. If he tolerates it well, we can see about continuing the regimen as an outpatient."

"Hey doc, is something wrong?" Adam's father was giving me a strange look.

"Huh?"

"You keep rubbing your chest. You okay?"

I forced a smile. "Fine. Just tired."

Adam's voice interrupted us. "This is way cool!" he said, admiring the video game I'd brought. "Doug is so gonna want it!"

Another success, I thought to myself as I headed to the next room. Twelve-year-old Marcie was in the final stages of leukemia, her ten-year struggle coming to an unhappy end. She was asleep when I entered the room, her older sister keeping a watchful eye. Her parents had gone to the cafeteria for a much-needed break.

"She wanted to stay awake for you," the sister said. "I promised I'd wake her up when you came."

"Don't. She needs the rest." And the precious moments without pain, I mentally added.

"I know." The sister – Anne, I think her name was – looked wistfully at the bed. "She doesn't have much longer, does she?"

"No, I'm afraid she doesn't."

"Will she make it to the New Year?"

I sighed heavily. "I don't know."

"My parents – they haven't accepted that Marcie's going to die."

The pain was back; I couldn't decide if it was physical or emotional. "But you have."

"I don't want to see her suffer, or my parents suffer."

I provided what solace I could to a child forced to be the adult in the family. After a few minutes and a promise to return to the room before I left the ward, I took my leave. Outside the room, I leaned against the wall, setting the sack of toys at my feet. I took several deep breaths, forcing air into my lungs. It didn't help nearly as much as I'd hoped. My chest hurt.

My fingers snaked up to my carotid. I didn't need to count the beats to know my heart was racing. My symptoms lined up as if on House's whiteboard. Chest pain, pain in my left arm, tachycardia, sweating. Shit, I was having a heart attack. I was thirty-eight years old, no risk factors. How could I be having a heart attack?

Leaving my bag, I carefully made my way down the hallway to the nurse's station, feeling my heart pounding in my chest every step of the way.

"Dr. Wilson!" A nurse named Maggie came up to me. "I'm so glad you came. The children are so excited—" She looked at me strangely. "Dr. Wilson, are you okay?"

"I need to sit down," I managed as I dropped into the nearest chair. It was on rollers and I almost fell off as it moved out from under me. "Chest hurts," I said, rubbing my breastbone through the padded suit.

This admission prompted obvious concern. This time her fingers found my carotid, then brushed against my forehead. Immediately she reached for the phone. "Josh, need you at the nurse's station stat." A second later. "Now, right now. It's Dr. Wilson; I think he may be having an MI."

My terror returned. I was having a heart attack. Shit. I tried to focus on what I needed to do. I was in a hospital, I reminded myself; I didn't need to do anything.

"Okay, Dr. Wilson," Maggie said in a soothing tone. "We're going to take care of you, get you down to the ER and get you checked out." Gentle hands pulled my Santa hat off my head and undid the buttons of my suit. I was too scared to feel like an idiot. A man came running up – it was Josh, another of the oncology nurses.

"We're just gonna get you on this gurney," Maggie said. A few seconds of gentle words and not-so-gentle tugs later I found myself flat on my back with a view of fluorescent lighting racing overhead. I hoped, prayed, that none of the patients or their parents were seeing any of this.

There was a yell to hold the elevator. I started to look around and, as the gurney was pushed inside, realized it was being held for me. Maggie's hand held my left arm, telling me to relax. Josh braced my right and I wondered if the were trying to console me or hold me down.


	2. Chapter 2

The ER looks and feels very different from the perspective of a patient and, I decided after not more than thirty seconds of the patient experience, it was not a good thing. There was a bustle of activity as the remnants of the Santa suit were cut off along with my clothes, while various monitors were attached to my finger, chest, and arm. I tried not to think about how much I'd have to pay for that stupid suit now lying in shreds on the floor. An oxygen cannula was inserted into my nostrils and the rush of cool air felt surprisingly good.

An ER nurse I didn't recognize started an IV in one arm while a second tech took my vitals. He must have thought that, being a doctor, I would care, not recognizing that right now I was much more patient than doctor. Pulse 132, BP 110/60, respirations 24 and temp 99.6. So, I was tachycardic, but BP was normal and the elevated temp probably reflected the hour I'd spent in that stupid Santa suit. EKG leads magically appeared on my chest, arms and ankles.

The cubicle's curtain swished. "Dr. Wilson!" I didn't need to open my eyes to know the voice belonged to Allison Cameron. Of all days for her to be on duty. I trusted her, but it was still Cameron.

"Dr. Wilson?"

Huh? I felt her cool fingers settle gently on my forearm. My eyes opened to meet her deep brown ones, filled with concern.

"Tell me how you're feeling." Of course Cameron would ask the question that way. House would have simply demanded a list of my symptoms, but Cameron wanted to know how I felt.

"Like crap," I answered truthfully, evoking a tight smile from my doctor.

Cameron asked me to describe my chest pain – where it was located, whether it had changed location.

Burning and aching, under the breastbone, steady on one side only. I knew the drill.

"Pain on a scale of one to ten?"

Not a ten, I thought as I absently rubbed my chest. Now that I was here, safe and sound in the ER, I wasn't nearly as scared, but my semi-reclined position hadn't really eased the pain. "Six."

Cameron spoke to the techs, ordering pain meds as well as the standard blood work for a possible MI. Having her confirm my fears started my heart racing again. "Try to relax, Dr. Wilson. We're going to take good care of you." Relax, right. No problem. Cameron unwrapped her stethoscope from around her neck and listened to my chest.

As Cameron finished and stepped away from the gurney, another tech appeared at my side. "Hi, Doctor Wilson, I'm just going to take some of your precious blood." She looked familiar but I couldn't make out the name on her security badge. Tammy or Teri or something like that. My arm was secured in a vice grip. "Big stick," she said as she jabbed the needle into my vein.

"Did the pain come on suddenly?" Cameron was at it again.

She clearly wasn't referring to my now throbbing arm. "Maybe an hour ago."

"Are you experiencing pain anywhere else?"

She was going to kill me with these questions. I mentioned the pain in my left arm and she dutifully jotted down my response in the chart.

"Am I having an MI?" That was the only important question – and the elephant in the room.

"Well, your EKG looks good," Cameron said, nodding to where the machine was dutifully recording the tracings of my heart. "No ST-segment elevation, or signs of ischemia—"

The curtain swished open to reveal a clearly agitated House. For a moment, he simply stood there, eyes pinched, forehead creased, as if his brain was trying to confirm what his eyes were seeing. "What the hell happened to you?"

Two thoughts immediately hit me. First, when House entered a room, it was if God Himself had arrived – or maybe the Devil. The second was that, somehow, House's single gruff question was more comforting than all of Cameron's doting. I didn't know how he'd found out about me, but my relief at House being here was immediate and overwhelming. Cameron was a competent doctor but I trusted House more than anyone else to figure out what was wrong with me, to keep me from dying, and especially to keep me from dying in a Santa suit on Christmas Eve.

Cane in hand, House crossed the short distance to my bed in two steps, grabbing the chart from Cameron's hand and almost body-blocking the medtech out of the way. I'd seen House spend hours poring over a chart, searching for the one scrap of information that would solve his case. I'd also see him glean more from a cursory review than most physicians would learn in several hours. My chart got the cursory review and, within what seemed no more than seconds, his blue eyes were back on me.

"What happened?" he again demanded.

Where to start? While I was trying to decide, Cameron answered on my behalf. "He was brought into the ER fifteen minutes ago, complaining of—"

House's gaze never left me. "Let him talk."

Anyone else would have thought House was angry. From experience, I knew differently. The fact that House had yet to make a snide comment meant he was scared and that turned whatever momentary comfort I'd felt back into panic. "I had chest pain," I managed and, trying to sound at least somewhat clinical, added, "radiating to the left arm."

"And tachycardia," Cameron added, earning a glare from House.

He grabbed a stethoscope and leaned over me, roughly pushing aside my gown. Most doctors would have warmed the bell; House didn't and I couldn't restrain a slight shudder as the cold metal pressed on my chest. House, intent on listening, didn't notice or, more likely, didn't care.

My eyes watched his face, searching for a clue as to his thoughts, his diagnosis. His focus, however, was somewhere on the wall behind me. At one point, his eyebrows narrowed, and I tried to decide if that was good or bad. After repositioning the stethoscope and listening some more, he suddenly snapped the instrument from his ears and stood up. Some of the tension seemed to have dissipated. "Sounds okay," he said to no one in particular.

I released a deep sigh as the tension in my own body eased just a bit. I was starting to hold out some hope that it wasn't an MI, but the accumulation of my symptoms still needed a name.

House grabbed again for the chart. "Where are the results of his cardiac enzymes?"

"Still waiting," Cameron replied.

"EKG?"

"Bit of sinus tach; otherwise normal."

He turned to me with a look that was now more curious than worried, morphing into the diagnostic genius facing another medical challenge. "Tell me about the arm pain."

House had left me mostly uncovered and I shivered again. Cameron reached to pull up the blanket when House's arm shot out to stop her. "He's cold," she said.

"He'll be a lot colder if he dies." He tapped on the bedrail. "Arm pain, go."

I shrugged, which actually brought the pain to the forefront. "It hurts."

House rolled his eyes and his head simultaneously. "De. Scribe. The. Pain." The tone was one reserved for his most annoying patients and colleagues. And, sometimes, me.

"Stings when I move it."

Cameron was hovering again. "Do you need more pain medication, Dr. Wilson?"

"No," House answered for me. Easy for him to say. House limped around the gurney and started palpating my left arm. His second violation of our unspoken "no touching" rule in one day. That alone spoke volumes.

"What'd you eat and drink today?" he asked when he'd finished and haphazardly folded the blanket over my torso.

It was often difficult to follow House's train of thought when I was healthy and engaged – in my present condition, it was downright impossible. "Coffee and danish for breakfast. Late lunch – turkey, stuffing, potatoes – the usual Christmas dinner." For most people, I mentally added, thinking about the pizza and porn.

House just stared at me for what seemed like at least a minute. "Wilson, you're an idiot," he said.

I'd take being an idiot so long as I wasn't an idiot having a heart attack.

"You too, Cameron." House pointed at the cubicle's only chair, and the remaining tech moved it closer to him. He slowly sank into it.

A tech rushed into the room, paper in hand. "Lab results," he announced. House snatched them out of his hand and, after a brief glance, handed them to Cameron with a self-satisfied smirk.

"You're fine," House said with a heavy sigh. "Well, mostly fine." He again nodded at the ER tech. "You can start getting him ready to get out of here."

"He needs a cardiac consult," Cameron said.

"No he doesn't. Not a cardiac problem. EKG and enzymes are normal."

"But his chest pain—" Cameron asked.

"Heartburn after a meal. Classic GERD."

"And the pain in his left arm?" Cameron was not to be deterred.

House sighed, leaned forward over his cane. "Our do-gooder St. Nick here ate a heavy meal before taking off on his one-horse sleigh. But instead of actually using a sleigh – or even a wheelchair – he decided to carry the Santa bag filled with lots of toys for good little girls and boys all by himself. Not to be mistaken for Arnold Schwarzenegger, and being a lefty, he strained his triceps slinging that stupid bag up and down over his shoulder. Then the GERD kicked in. Our friendly Kris Kringle, already hot under his velvet collar, felt the heartburn, mistook it for chest pain and started to panic. Tachycardia ensued – helped along by his daily massive caffeine intake. Convinced this would be his last dash through the snow – or at least the dying kiddie ward, our friendly Santa went into full panic mode; chest pain got worse, palpitations increased and, presto, all the signs of an MI. Only thing missing was – oh, yeah, the actual infarction."

House delivered his pronouncement with his typical combination of sarcasm, condescension, and pontificating. And, as always, it made perfect sense once he explained it.

I wasn't dying, not even close. "You think I have GERD?" Gastroesophageal reflux disease or, more commonly, acid reflux. Annoying but infinitely manageable and treatable. I let my head fall back against the gurney, and my eyes to close.

"Dr. Wilson, I really think you should stay overnight for observation," Cameron said to me.

I'd been unhooked from all of the monitors and one of the nurses had found me a set of scrubs to wear home. I understood her concern and, if I'd been my doctor, I'd have probably tried to keep me here. But I was a doctor, had looked over my own chart, and knew I'd be okay – actually a lot better – at home. I said as much to Cameron.

"You shouldn't be alone tonight." Her voice took on an almost pleading quality.

"That desperate for a date?" House asked from his seat.

She turned on him with her usual mixture of frustration and despair. "House, you're a doctor, you know that after having a cardiac incident—"

"That wasn't a cardiac incident," he finished smoothly. "Go take care of sick people. Leave Wilson to me."

I couldn't restrain a small grin. She must have seen it because she gave me an icy look before turning to leave.

"Cameron." My voice stopped her at the edge of the cubicle. "Thank you."

I was rewarded with a smile. "See you tomorrow, Dr. Wilson."

When she was gone, House pulled himself out of the chair. "She's right, you know. You shouldn't be alone tonight." It was as close as House would come to showing that he cared.

"Don't think I'm up for pizza," I said.

"How about milk and cookies? Perfect for a Santa with GERD."

"You don't have milk and cookies and the stores are closed."

"7-Eleven's open." He started walking out of the cubicle.

I trailed after him. "If you let me watch _It's a Wonderful Life_, it's a deal."

"I'm not watching that stupid movie."

"My heart's not up to porn," I replied.

"Don't think they've made _It's a Charlie Brown Hanukuk_."

I smiled. I could have said thanks. I could have wished House a merry Christmas. But this was better. No, this was perfect – a perfect Christmas for a Jew and his crazy friend.


End file.
